“CHANNEL” - MARKO SPALATIN - Serigraph -1970 - Signed & Numbered - 30/60

Channel, Marko Spalatin (Croatian/American, b. 1945), c. 1970s, serigraph on paper, image 25½ × 20 in., sheet 30½ × 25½ in., titled lower left, numbered 30/60 center, pencil-signed lower right. Limited edition hand-pulled and hand-drawn original serigraph.

Artwork Description

A quietly monumental geometric composition depicting an architectural fragment — a stepped, interlocking arrangement of rectilinear forms rendered entirely in a restrained palette of cool grey-greens, steel blues, and soft lavender — that achieves a meditative stillness rare in Op Art's typically kinetic vocabulary. Where Cube Field vibrates with perceptual energy, Channel contemplates space with architectural gravity.

The composition presents what appears to be the corner junction of two large horizontal platforms or terraces viewed from a slightly elevated angle. The dominant form — a massive horizontal slab occupying the upper left two-thirds of the image — is rendered in cool sage green, its top surface, left face, and receding edge each described in a subtly different tonal value of the same hue. This tonal differentiation — so precise and controlled as to feel almost mechanical — is what constructs the illusion of three-dimensional form from pure flat color. There are no shadows, no gradients, no atmospheric effects. Light is implied entirely through the relationships between adjacent color planes.

At right, the platform steps down to reveal a lower terrace divided into a grid of six rectangular recesses — three across and two deep — each recess rendered in a darker tonal value suggesting depth and interior shadow. This grid of open chambers introduces a secondary rhythm into the composition, a modular geometry that counterpoints the monolithic simplicity of the main slab. The recesses read simultaneously as windows, skylights, wells, and pure geometric voids — purposefully ambiguous in their architectural reference.

The background — a soft lavender-blue plane occupying the upper right quadrant — establishes the sky or outer space against which the architectural forms are set. Its warm lavender note is the one chromatic departure from the otherwise all-grey-green palette, and it is placed with surgical precision: cool enough to recede spatially, warm enough to prevent the composition from becoming tonally monotonous.

What is exceptional here is the emotional register. Most Op Art is activating — it stimulates, agitates, produces optical tension. Channel does something rarer: it stills. The forms are massive, unhurried, architecturally inevitable. The palette is hushed. The geometry suggests not a visual puzzle but a built environment — ancient, solid, indifferent to the viewer's presence. The title itself is evocative: a channel is both an architectural passage and a conduit for flow — suggesting that this cool geometric world is not static but moving, slowly, through space and time.

The serigraphic execution is, as always with Spalatin, immaculate. The color planes are perfectly registered, the edges razor-clean, the tonal modulations between adjacent values so carefully calibrated that the transitions read as continuous rather than stepped. The edition of 60 with hand-pulling and hand-drawing confirms this as a fully artisanal production — each impression produced with the direct physical involvement of the artist or master printer.

Artist Biography

Marko Spalatin was born in Zagreb, Croatia and immigrated to the United States in the early 1960s. He earned both a BS and MFA from the University of Wisconsin in Madison Cumberland Gallery — an institution that during the late 1960s and early 1970s was a significant center for printmaking innovation and the development of the American serigraph as a fine art medium.

A leading American Op artist of the 1970s era and beyond, Spalatin came to the United States from Croatia in 1963. Since 1970 his art has been included in major exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Paris, Montreal, and Beirut. Etsy

Spalatin has been exhibiting his artwork for over 40 years across the US as well as in France, Croatia, Canada, Lebanon, Italy, and Slovenia, and in numerous group exhibitions in 12 countries. Cumberland Gallery

His work is held in an extraordinary roster of permanent collections. His work is found in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Musée d'Art Moderne Paris, the Brooklyn Museum, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Bibliothèque Nationale Paris, and the Library of Congress Washington DC. 1stDibs

Spalatin's work represents a continuous involvement with abstract geometric forms defined by careful manipulation of color and light. Cumberland Gallery In his own words: "The relationship between form and color within the pictorial field demands a visually symbiotic presence. The challenge revolves around the selection of a form as a vehicle for color, as well as choosing appropriate color and light for that form. This interplay creates a primary spatial illusion, along with secondary effects. I find that precisely defined areas of color, when placed against each other, compete for dominance."

The cube series — of which Cube Field is a prime example — dates from the early 1970s and represents the foundational body of work that established Spalatin's international reputation. Reviewed in the New York Times by John Canaday in 1972 and in Art News by Douglas Crimp the same year, his work attracted serious critical attention from the moment it reached New York's gallery circuit. The Cube Field serigraph, with its edition of 50, is among the most sought-after works from this period.

MARKO SPALATIN:  Born in 1945 in Zagreb, Croatia. He is well known for his colorful geometric designs in the form of limited edition prints and also original paintings. The movement of light through the world and across variegated surfaces and the relationship between them, is one of the focal points of Spalatin's work. “In general, my compositions remain formal and symmetrical in order to be set in motion by unexpected mutations of color and light. In some cases, the careful placement of small areas of saturated color against a backdrop of transitional grays creates an illusion of suspended particles. There is no doubt that in these images in particular, my sense of color and light is subconsciously influenced and sustained by many years of scuba diving in the waters of the Adriatic Sea and the Caribbean. I am intrigued by the relativity of color and by the mystery of light, and I am constantly challenged to explore their potentials. Every painting becomes a self-imposed visual problem, subjectively resolved in search of an objective truth.”His work has been featured in over 70 solo exhibitions and is represented in major museums and many private, corporate, and public collections, around the world.